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ABSTRACT

Occupy Haifa: British Intelligence and the Plans for the Occupation of
Northern Palestine, 1907

This book is based on a secret reconnaissance report of Northern Palestine by
a British officer who visited the country in 1907. The report was concealed
for almost a century until released to the public at The National Archives,
Kew.
The escalating relations between the British and Ottoman empires in
1906, following a dispute over the border delineation between Ottoman
Palestine and British-held Sinai Peninsula, prompted the British War Office
to plan a combined operation of amphibious landing in Haifa Bay. This was
to be followed by the occupation of the entire region between Haifa and
Damascus along sections of the Hijaz Railway.
To update the intelligence required for the operation, Colonel Francis
Richard Maunsell, former British military attaché at Constantinople, was
sent to Palestine early in 1907. Ostensibly an innocent traveler, Maunsell
reconnoitered northern Palestine and Syria, collected topographical, terrain
and demographic data as well as military intelligence. His observations,
submitted to the War Office in the form of an exhaustive report, became the
foundation on which the British invasion plan to Palestine was based prior to
World War I.
The report – presented here in print for the first time – includes both a
textual and visual description in detail of the region between the Haifa-
Akko (Acre) Coast in the west and the Golan Heights and the Damascus
Basin in the east. It is indeed a precise representation of the natural and
human geography of Northern Palestine at the beginning of the 20th
century, including, among many other features, towns, population, ports,
infrastructure, communications, military installations, and water sources.
The original report, adapted here for the modern reader, is written from a

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